even better than the [ethe]real thing

even better than the [ethe]real thing:a response to Alex Galloway's "Protocol"

"All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real. We were losing that mysterious and bright and most beautiful ability to say that Signor A has grown bestial -- without thinking for a moment that he now has fur and fangs."

- Casaubon from Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum"

ALEX GALLOWAY IS A GEEK. IT'S A GOOD THING.

When reading a text on media theory, my underlying skeptical question is always, "How much do the nuances which are foregrounded and analyzed here practically relate to human experience and human society?" If they barely do, the book winds up being one more exercise in scatological academia and/or cyber-utopian fluff-urism. Refreshingly, Alex Galloway's "Protocol" succeeds in avoiding what Geert Lovink calls "vapor theory." This is due in no small part to the fact that Alex Galloway is a geek (or at least a wanna-be geek). Not "geek" in the pejorative sense, but "geek" in the "down with the root workings of technology" sense. For example, Galloway's research led him to read hundreds of RFC (Requests for Comments) documents, the technical documents that establish Internet protocol (among other things). Galloway writes, ""Far more than mere technical documentation, however, the RFCs are a discursive treasure trove for the critical theorist." I wonder how many other critical theorists would think so.

Observation, interpretation, and application are the three steps of inductive textual criticism. Not a few technological pundits breeze through the initial observation step, acquiring only a superficial understanding of the tech, and then rush off to boldly interpret and apply. This leads to elaborate, inventive conclusions that are frequently misguided if not altogether wrong. But Galloway has looked long and hard at the network and its protocol, and his interpretations (even though I disagree with some of them) are more intricate and less cliche as a result of his having looked. As such, "Protocol" lays the groundwork for anyone to riff off of Galloway's insightful observations, even if her preconceived biases differ from his.

Furthermore, Galloway's range of sources is so diverse, it feels like an academic compilation tape. His research is intimidatingly broad -- from usability expert Jeff Veen to generative software artist Adrian Ward, from open source evangelist Richard Stallman to cult lawyer Lawrence Lessig. Marx, Baudrillard, Barthes, Foucault, and Deleuze make expected appearances. But also appearing are Marxist media theorist Hans Magnus Enzensberger, cyberfeminist Doll Yoko, and phone phreaker Knight Lightning. The list goes on (and on and on). Furthermore, "Protocol"'s tangential anecdotes about the formation of the internet and the history of hacking and virii read like a scattershot compendium of geek folklore.

HEAVY INSIGHTS, WELL CODIFIED

Galloway's prose, although not exactly McLuhan-esque, is inordinately sound-bytable. Below are just a few "spoilers," nuggets of particularly acute and concise insight:

On the nature of protocol:"From a formal perspective, protocol is a type of object. It is a very special kind of object. Protocol is a universal description language for objects... Protocol does not produce or causally effect objects, but rather is a structuring agent that appears as the result of a set of object dispositions. Protocol is the reason that the internet works and performs work... It is etiquette for autonomous agents. It is the chivalry of the object."

[Note the rare combination of precise description and poetic flair. "The chivalry of the object" is a definite keeper.]

On protocol's inherent imperviousness to Modern criticism:"Only the participants [of protocol] can connect, and therefore, by definition, there can be no resistance to protocol... Opposing protocol is like opposing gravity -- there is nothing that says it can't be done, but such a pursuit is surely misguided and in the end hasn't hurt gravity very much."

Along the same lines:"The internet can survive [nuclear] attacks not because it is stronger than the opposition, but precisely because it is weaker. The Internet has a different diagram than a nuclear attack does; it is in a different shape. And that new shape happens to be immune to the older."

Galloway rightly insists that just as code is more than a mere semantic language (it causes machines to actually do something), the network is more than just a metaphor for connectivity (it actually behaves according to protocol).

He instructively traces of the cultural perception of computer viruses -- from a form of intellectual exploration to a form of machinic contagion (akin to AIDS) to a form of terrorist weapon.

He makes the important distinction between protocol and proprietary market dominance (Windows XP is not a form of protocol because its source code is opaque).

"Everyone interested in an emancipated media should be a manipulator."

"Fear of being swallowed up by the system is a sign of weakness."

"The best tactical response to protocol is not resistance but hypertrophy."

All culminating in this rousing definition:"The goal is not to destroy technology in some neo-Luddite delusion, but to push it into a state of hypertrophy, further than it is meant to go. Then, in its injured, sore, and unguarded condition, technology may be sculpted anew into something better, something in closer agreement with the real wants and desires of its users. This is the goal of tactical media."

Right on! Where do I sign?

EPISTEMOLOGY IS AS EPISTEMOLOGY DOES

Having sufficiently praised "Protocol," I'd like to enter into critical dialogue with it. My first problem with the text is that it oversteps its stated scope. Galloway makes epistemological assertions without offering epistemological defenses.

He says in the introduction, "I draw a critical distinction between [the] body of work [that deals with artificial intelligence], which is concerned largely with epistemology and cognitive science, and the critical media theory that inspires this book. Where the former are concerned with minds and questions epistemological, I am largely concerned with bodies and the material stratum of computer technology."

Unfortunately, "bodies" and "matter" to Galloway take on markedly metaphysical meanings, meanings that delineate a fairly explicit view of reality which he feels no obligation to defend. He asserts a kind of "aesthetic materialism" (his term). In short, he seeks to recast the spiritual and soulish in terms of the "virtual," the "second nature," the cultural/sociopolitical, the "artificial," a "patina," the essence or sheen that derives from matter but is not "other than" matter. (More on this later.)

"Protocol" eschews epistemological questions as not pertinent to its scope, but by deeming such questions irrelevant, Galloway has already entered into implicit dialogue on "the matter" (pun intended). If I wish to discuss human origins without talking about evolution, I'm a creationist. If I wish to discuss life without talking about soul or spirit, I'm a materialist.

In the book's foreword, Eugene Thacker calls "Protocol" a type of "materialist media studies." He goes on to observe, quite accurately: "'Protocol' consistently makes a case for a material understanding of technology. 'Material' can be taken in all sense of the term, as an ontological category as well as a political and economic one." Galloway gladly owns up to politics and economics, but his ventures into ontology, although apparent, are less disclosed.

MARX SAID IT, I DECONSTRUCT IT, THAT SETTLES IT

My next critique of "Protocol" is that it awkwardly uses Marx's "Capital" to justify a contemporary materialist understanding of artificial life.

After 14 pages of foregrounding Marx's vitalistic language, Galloway concludes, "'Capital' is an aesthetic object. The confluence of different discourses in 'Capital,' both vitalistic and economic, proves this. The use of vitalistic imagery, no matter how marginalized within the text, quite literally aestheticizes capitalism." That poetic language can transform a theoretical text into an aesthetic object seems perfectly plausible. That poetic language can "literally aestheticize" capitalism itself is a more vague and suspect assertion.

Even if Marx does attribute a kind of "will" to objects within capitalism, he's not exactly celebrating reification or commodity fetishism. Galloway asserts, "[The] vitalism in Marx heralds the dawning age of protocol, I argue, by transforming life itself into an aesthetic object." Aside from the fact that "life itself" was understood as an aesthetic object in the soulish realm long before Marx, likening commodity fetishism to machinic artificial life seems an awkward stretch. Galloway himself points out that Foucault's theories of control date Marx's, and Deleuze's date Foucault's. Is Marx so canonical that he's worth 14 pages of deconstruction in order to claim him as the historical genesis of one's contemporary assertion?

DUMBING DOWN LIFE

Continuing on the "artificial life" critique (and invariably stepping on dozens of cyber-toes), there are two ways to make "computers" seem more than what they are. You can discern life where there is none, or you can redefine "life" until it matches what you discern in computers. Galloway subtly snubs futurist Ray Kurzweil and the Wired "gee whiz" crowd for doing the former, and then proceeds to do the latter.

Building on Foucault and Deleuze, Galloway asserts that "life, hitherto considered an effuse, immaterial essence, has become matter, due to its increased imbrication with protocol forces."

He assents to Crary and Winter's definition of "protocological" life as "the forces -- aesthetic, technical, political, sexual -- with which things combine in order to form novel aggregates of pattern and behavior."

After an explication of Norbert Weiner's ideas on cybernetics, Galloway concludes, "If one views the world in terms of information..., then there is little instrumental difference between man and machine since both are able to affect dynamic systems via feedback loops." Would Weiner himself have agreed to such a sweeping generalization?

So matter is life and life is matter. Not metaphorically, but actually. This is achieved by defining "life" very loosely.

I'm reminded of a passage in "The Language of New Media" where Lev Manovich comes very close to defining "narrative" as any action that constitutes a change of state. Walking from room to room thus becomes a narrative. At which point I would simply choose a different word.

AESTHETIC MATERIALISM AND THE CYBORGS FROM MARS

Why is Galloway so keen to show that a "second nature" of aesthetic materialism exists in both social and machinic systems? Because such a "second nature" affords the exploration of an aesthetic realm without the abandonment of a materialist world view. Such a "second nature" also admits the possibility of man/machine hybridization. If reality is all just matter, and matter may be abstracted into organized information, artificial life and biological life are "virtually" kissing cousins. Galloway actually defines the information age as "that moment in history when matter itself is understood in terms of information or code. At this historical moment, protocol becomes a controlling force in social life."

At the end of his chapter on "control," Galloway goes on to predict a historical period "after distribution" -- a future where computers are replaced by bioinformatics, information is replaced by life, protocol is replaced by physics, and containment is replaced by peace.

A similar "gee whiz" passage occurs earlier in the "control" chapter: "When Watson and Crick discovered DNA..., they prove not simply that life is an informatic object..., but rather that life is an aesthetic object; it is a double helix, an elegant, hyper-Platonic form that rises like a ladder into the heights of aesthetic purity. Life was no longer a 'pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas' (Eliot), it was a code borne from pure mathematics, an object of aesthetic beauty, a double helix! This historical moment -- when life is defined no longer as essence, but as code -- is the moment when life becomes a medium." I agree that DNA is fascinating stuff, but to attribute the mystery and wonder of existence to the aesthetic beauty of a DNA strand seems more like cyber-utopian poetry and less like scholarship aloof from ontological concerns.

Elsewhere, Galloway waxes eloquent about biometrics: "Biometrics [the science of measuring the human body and deriving digital signatures from it] considers living human bodies not in their immaterial essences, or souls, or what have you, but in terms of quantifiable, recordable, enumerable, and encodable characteristics. It considers life as an aesthetic object. It is the natural evolution of Marx's theory of second nature." The progression from souls to quantifiable biometric information is presented as an aesthetic advancement? If anything, biometrics seems a neo-techno form of alienation.

Another curious assertion: "Computer use could possibly constitute a real immigration of bodies (from the online to the offline)," which seems akin to this cryptic statement by feminist Sadie Plant: "You can't get out of matter, that's the crucial thing. But you can get out of the confining organization of matter which is shaped into things and of course, organisms." I find it difficult to accept such conceptions of the self at face value.

IT'S THE PEOPLE, PEOPLE.

"Protocol" radically posits that the Internet is successful not just because it is anarchic, but because this "anarchy" coexists with a rigid form of control. I agree, but I think the rigid form of control is not the DNS (Domain Name System) hierarchy (as Galloway proposes), but the core, old-boy geek community of RFC-writing protocol-shapers (which Galloway critiques as an institutional weakness of protocol). Domain names are a mnemonic convenience, but their use is not a prerequisite for entry to the network. One can still access a server using its IP number, it's just inconvenient. Yet protocols, according to Galloway's definition, are not merely meant to make access more convenient, they are meant to either enable it or forbid it altogether. Thus the real control of the Internet derives not primarily from the DNS but from the fact that protocol itself is shaped by an altruistic, but nonetheless human and extra-protocological community.

Galloway argues that, "Life forms, both artificial and organic, exist in any space where material forces are actively aestheticized." I agree. But who is doing the aestheticizing? He continues, "The same protocological forces that regulate data flows within contingent environments such as distributed networks are the same forces that regulate matter itself." I'm not so sure. The forces that regulate "non-organic" "life" in network environments are protocols created by humans. The forces that regulate organic life in "natural" environments are material needs like food and shelter that are not created by humans (unless we're talking about a capitalistic environment, where many forces are man-made. But capitalism is not "matter itself.")

A reasonable string of questions thus arises: can vitality exist in economic and social systems apart from human life? Is Foucault's desire to "define a method of historical analysis freed from the anthropological theme" really viable? Does vitality exist in machinic systems without initial human input? There may be some minimal form of "vitality" on the network even without any humans actively using it (Eugene Thacker muses, "Is a network a network if it's not being used?"), but would that vitality exist without humans first constructing the network's protocol to begin with? Is individual human soulishness (mind, will, emotions) at the root of such vitality?

Even Tom Ray's "Tierra" (software that creates a virtual evolutionary environment in which "artificial lives" autonomously "live") still begins with human input. The "life" initially comes from Tom, and only indirectly from the protocol of the environment.

STRANGE IS GOOD

"Protocol" concludes on a less speculative, more balanced note. Galloway summarizes the problems inherent in protocol, and recognizes that its ethical use will ultimately depend on what we humans make of it.

The fact that I'm able even able to dialogue with "Protocol" from a non-materialist, soulish perspective is testament to the solid, methodical, observational foundation Galloway has laid.

Personally, the chapters in "Protocol" on hacking, tactical media, and internet art make me excited to be making internet art in 2004. Not because "Protocol" extols the virtues of some futuristic AI utopia that's just around the bend (and has been just around the bend for the last 30 years without ever quite materializing), but because it exposes and delineates the very actual, sexy, dangerous shifts in media and culture currently underway. The truth is always stranger than fiction, and strange is good.

Very enjoyable read - best stuff i've read on here for a long time, loads to chew on :-)

thanx

marc

> even better than the [ethe]real thing:> a response to Alex Galloway's "Protocol">> "All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you > always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from > the real. We were losing that mysterious and bright and most > beautiful ability to say that Signor A has grown bestial -- without > thinking for a moment that he now has fur and fangs.">> - Casaubon from Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum">>>> ALEX GALLOWAY IS A GEEK. IT'S A GOOD THING.>> When reading a text on media theory, my underlying skeptical question > is always, "How much do the nuances which are foregrounded and > analyzed here practically relate to human experience and human > society?" If they barely do, the book winds up being one more > exercise in scatological academia and/or cyber-utopian fluff-urism. > Refreshingly, Alex Galloway's "Protocol" succeeds in avoiding what > Geert Lovink calls "vapor theory." This is due in no small part to > the fact that Alex Galloway is a geek (or at least a wanna-be geek). > Not "geek" in the pejorative sense, but "geek" in the "down with the > root workings of technology" sense. For example, Galloway's research > led him to read hundreds of RFC (Requests for Comments) documents, the > technical documents that establish Internet protocol (among other > things). Galloway writes, ""Far more than mere technical > documentation, however, the RFCs are a discursive treasure trove for > the critical theorist." I wonder how many other critical theorists > would think so.>> Observation, interpretation, and application are the three steps of > inductive textual criticism. Not a few technological pundits breeze > through the initial observation step, acquiring only a superficial > understanding of the tech, and then rush off to boldly interpret and > apply. This leads to elaborate, inventive conclusions that are > frequently misguided if not altogether wrong. But Galloway has looked > long and hard at the network and its protocol, and his interpretations > (even though I disagree with some of them) are more intricate and less > cliche as a result of his having looked. As such, "Protocol" lays the > groundwork for anyone to riff off of Galloway's insightful > observations, even if her preconceived biases differ from his.>> Furthermore, Galloway's range of sources is so diverse, it feels like > an academic compilation tape. His research is intimidatingly broad -- > from usability expert Jeff Veen to generative software artist Adrian > Ward, from open source evangelist Richard Stallman to cult lawyer > Lawrence Lessig. Marx, Baudrillard, Barthes, Foucault, and Deleuze > make expected appearances. But also appearing are Marxist media > theorist Hans Magnus Enzensberger, cyberfeminist Doll Yoko, and phone > phreaker Knight Lightning. The list goes on (and on and on). > Furthermore, "Protocol"'s tangential anecdotes about the formation of > the internet and the history of hacking and virii read like a > scattershot compendium of geek folklore.>>>> HEAVY INSIGHTS, WELL CODIFIED>> Galloway's prose, although not exactly McLuhan-esque, is inordinately > sound-bytable. Below are just a few "spoilers," nuggets of > particularly acute and concise insight:>> On the nature of protocol:> "From a formal perspective, protocol is a type of object. It is a > very special kind of object. Protocol is a universal description > language for objects... Protocol does not produce or causally effect > objects, but rather is a structuring agent that appears as the result > of a set of object dispositions. Protocol is the reason that the > internet works and performs work... It is etiquette for autonomous > agents. It is the chivalry of the object.">> [Note the rare combination of precise description and poetic flair. > "The chivalry of the object" is a definite keeper.]>> On protocol's inherent imperviousness to Modern criticism:> "Only the participants [of protocol] can connect, and therefore, by > definition, there can be no resistance to protocol... Opposing > protocol is like opposing gravity -- there is nothing that says it > can't be done, but such a pursuit is surely misguided and in the end > hasn't hurt gravity very much.">> Along the same lines:> "The internet can survive [nuclear] attacks not because it is stronger > than the opposition, but precisely because it is weaker. The Internet > has a different diagram than a nuclear attack does; it is in a > different shape. And that new shape happens to be immune to the older.">> Galloway rightly insists that just as code is more than a mere > semantic language (it causes machines to actually do something), the > network is more than just a metaphor for connectivity (it actually > behaves according to protocol).>> He instructively traces of the cultural perception of computer viruses > -- from a form of intellectual exploration to a form of machinic > contagion (akin to AIDS) to a form of terrorist weapon.>> He makes the important distinction between protocol and proprietary > market dominance (Windows XP is not a form of protocol because its > source code is opaque).>> And he offers these inspirationally punk rock samples regarding > tactical media:>> "Everyone interested in an emancipated media should be a manipulator.">> "Fear of being swallowed up by the system is a sign of weakness.">> "The best tactical response to protocol is not resistance but > hypertrophy.">> All culminating in this rousing definition:> "The goal is not to destroy technology in some neo-Luddite delusion, > but to push it into a state of hypertrophy, further than it is meant > to go. Then, in its injured, sore, and unguarded condition, > technology may be sculpted anew into something better, something in > closer agreement with the real wants and desires of its users. This > is the goal of tactical media.">> Right on! Where do I sign?>>>> EPISTEMOLOGY IS AS EPISTEMOLOGY DOES>> Having sufficiently praised "Protocol," I'd like to enter into > critical dialogue with it. My first problem with the text is that it > oversteps its stated scope. Galloway makes epistemological assertions > without offering epistemological defenses.>> He says in the introduction, "I draw a critical distinction between > [the] body of work [that deals with artificial intelligence], which is > concerned largely with epistemology and cognitive science, and the > critical media theory that inspires this book. Where the former are > concerned with minds and questions epistemological, I am largely > concerned with bodies and the material stratum of computer technology.">> Unfortunately, "bodies" and "matter" to Galloway take on markedly > metaphysical meanings, meanings that delineate a fairly explicit view > of reality which he feels no obligation to defend. He asserts a kind > of "aesthetic materialism" (his term). In short, he seeks to recast > the spiritual and soulish in terms of the "virtual," the "second > nature," the cultural/sociopolitical, the "artificial," a "patina," > the essence or sheen that derives from matter but is not "other than" > matter. (More on this later.)>> "Protocol" eschews epistemological questions as not pertinent to its > scope, but by deeming such questions irrelevant, Galloway has already > entered into implicit dialogue on "the matter" (pun intended). If I > wish to discuss human origins without talking about evolution, I'm a > creationist. If I wish to discuss life without talking about soul or > spirit, I'm a materialist.>> In the book's foreword, Eugene Thacker calls "Protocol" a type of > "materialist media studies." He goes on to observe, quite accurately: > "'Protocol' consistently makes a case for a material understanding of > technology. 'Material' can be taken in all sense of the term, as an > ontological category as well as a political and economic one." > Galloway gladly owns up to politics and economics, but his ventures > into ontology, although apparent, are less disclosed.>>>> MARX SAID IT, I DECONSTRUCT IT, THAT SETTLES IT>> My next critique of "Protocol" is that it awkwardly uses Marx's > "Capital" to justify a contemporary materialist understanding of > artificial life.>> After 14 pages of foregrounding Marx's vitalistic language, Galloway > concludes, "'Capital' is an aesthetic object. The confluence of > different discourses in 'Capital,' both vitalistic and economic, > proves this. The use of vitalistic imagery, no matter how marginalized > within the text, quite literally aestheticizes capitalism." That > poetic language can transform a theoretical text into an aesthetic > object seems perfectly plausible. That poetic language can "literally > aestheticize" capitalism itself is a more vague and suspect assertion.>> Even if Marx does attribute a kind of "will" to objects within > capitalism, he's not exactly celebrating reification or commodity > fetishism. Galloway asserts, "[The] vitalism in Marx heralds the > dawning age of protocol, I argue, by transforming life itself into an > aesthetic object." Aside from the fact that "life itself" was > understood as an aesthetic object in the soulish realm long before > Marx, likening commodity fetishism to machinic artificial life seems > an awkward stretch. Galloway himself points out that Foucault's > theories of control date Marx's, and Deleuze's date Foucault's. Is > Marx so canonical that he's worth 14 pages of deconstruction in order > to claim him as the historical genesis of one's contemporary assertion?>>>> DUMBING DOWN LIFE>> Continuing on the "artificial life" critique (and invariably stepping > on dozens of cyber-toes), there are two ways to make "computers" seem > more than what they are. You can discern life where there is none, or > you can redefine "life" until it matches what you discern in > computers. Galloway subtly snubs futurist Ray Kurzweil and the Wired > "gee whiz" crowd for doing the former, and then proceeds to do the > latter.>> Building on Foucault and Deleuze, Galloway asserts that "life, > hitherto considered an effuse, immaterial essence, has become matter, > due to its increased imbrication with protocol forces.">> He assents to Crary and Winter's definition of "protocological" life > as "the forces -- aesthetic, technical, political, sexual -- with > which things combine in order to form novel aggregates of pattern and > behavior.">> After an explication of Norbert Weiner's ideas on cybernetics, > Galloway concludes, "If one views the world in terms of > information..., then there is little instrumental difference between > man and machine since both are able to affect dynamic systems via > feedback loops." Would Weiner himself have agreed to such a sweeping > generalization?>> So matter is life and life is matter. Not metaphorically, but > actually. This is achieved by defining "life" very loosely.>> I'm reminded of a passage in "The Language of New Media" where Lev > Manovich comes very close to defining "narrative" as any action that > constitutes a change of state. Walking from room to room thus becomes > a narrative. At which point I would simply choose a different word.>>>> AESTHETIC MATERIALISM AND THE CYBORGS FROM MARS>> Why is Galloway so keen to show that a "second nature" of aesthetic > materialism exists in both social and machinic systems? Because such > a "second nature" affords the exploration of an aesthetic realm > without the abandonment of a materialist world view. Such a "second > nature" also admits the possibility of man/machine hybridization. If > reality is all just matter, and matter may be abstracted into > organized information, artificial life and biological life are > "virtually" kissing cousins. Galloway actually defines the > information age as "that moment in history when matter itself is > understood in terms of information or code. At this historical > moment, protocol becomes a controlling force in social life.">> At the end of his chapter on "control," Galloway goes on to predict a > historical period "after distribution" -- a future where computers are > replaced by bioinformatics, information is replaced by life, protocol > is replaced by physics, and containment is replaced by peace.>> A similar "gee whiz" passage occurs earlier in the "control" chapter: > "When Watson and Crick discovered DNA..., they prove not simply that > life is an informatic object..., but rather that life is an aesthetic > object; it is a double helix, an elegant, hyper-Platonic form that > rises like a ladder into the heights of aesthetic purity. Life was no > longer a 'pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent > seas' (Eliot), it was a code borne from pure mathematics, an object of > aesthetic beauty, a double helix! This historical moment -- when life > is defined no longer as essence, but as code -- is the moment when > life becomes a medium." I agree that DNA is fascinating stuff, but to > attribute the mystery and wonder of existence to the aesthetic beauty > of a DNA strand seems more like cyber-utopian poetry and less like > scholarship aloof from ontological concerns.>> Elsewhere, Galloway waxes eloquent about biometrics: "Biometrics [the > science of measuring the human body and deriving digital signatures > from it] considers living human bodies not in their immaterial > essences, or souls, or what have you, but in terms of quantifiable, > recordable, enumerable, and encodable characteristics. It considers > life as an aesthetic object. It is the natural evolution of Marx's > theory of second nature." The progression from souls to quantifiable > biometric information is presented as an aesthetic advancement? If > anything, biometrics seems a neo-techno form of alienation.>> Another curious assertion: "Computer use could possibly constitute a > real immigration of bodies (from the online to the offline)," which > seems akin to this cryptic statement by feminist Sadie Plant: "You > can't get out of matter, that's the crucial thing. But you can get > out of the confining organization of matter which is shaped into > things and of course, organisms." I find it difficult to accept such > conceptions of the self at face value.>>>>> IT'S THE PEOPLE, PEOPLE.>> "Protocol" radically posits that the Internet is successful not just > because it is anarchic, but because this "anarchy" coexists with a > rigid form of control. I agree, but I think the rigid form of control > is not the DNS (Domain Name System) hierarchy (as Galloway proposes), > but the core, old-boy geek community of RFC-writing protocol-shapers > (which Galloway critiques as an institutional weakness of protocol). > Domain names are a mnemonic convenience, but their use is not a > prerequisite for entry to the network. One can still access a server > using its IP number, it's just inconvenient. Yet protocols, according > to Galloway's definition, are not merely meant to make access more > convenient, they are meant to either enable it or forbid it > altogether. Thus the real control of the Internet derives not > primarily from the DNS but from the fact that protocol itself is > shaped by an altruistic, but nonetheless human and > extra-protocological community.>> Galloway argues that, "Life forms, both artificial and organic, exist > in any space where material forces are actively aestheticized." I > agree. But who is doing the aestheticizing? He continues, "The same > protocological forces that regulate data flows within contingent > environments such as distributed networks are the same forces that > regulate matter itself." I'm not so sure. The forces that regulate > "non-organic" "life" in network environments are protocols created by > humans. The forces that regulate organic life in "natural" > environments are material needs like food and shelter that are not > created by humans (unless we're talking about a capitalistic > environment, where many forces are man-made. But capitalism is not > "matter itself.")>> A reasonable string of questions thus arises: can vitality exist in > economic and social systems apart from human life? Is Foucault's > desire to "define a method of historical analysis freed from the > anthropological theme" really viable? Does vitality exist in machinic > systems without initial human input? There may be some minimal form > of "vitality" on the network even without any humans actively using it > (Eugene Thacker muses, "Is a network a network if it's not being > used?"), but would that vitality exist without humans first > constructing the network's protocol to begin with? Is individual > human soulishness (mind, will, emotions) at the root of such vitality?>> Even Tom Ray's "Tierra" (software that creates a virtual evolutionary > environment in which "artificial lives" autonomously "live") still > begins with human input. The "life" initially comes from Tom, and > only indirectly from the protocol of the environment.>>>> STRANGE IS GOOD>> "Protocol" concludes on a less speculative, more balanced note. > Galloway summarizes the problems inherent in protocol, and recognizes > that its ethical use will ultimately depend on what we humans make of it.>> The fact that I'm able even able to dialogue with "Protocol" from a > non-materialist, soulish perspective is testament to the solid, > methodical, observational foundation Galloway has laid.>> Personally, the chapters in "Protocol" on hacking, tactical media, and > internet art make me excited to be making internet art in 2004. Not > because "Protocol" extols the virtues of some futuristic AI utopia > that's just around the bend (and has been just around the bend for the > last 30 years without ever quite materializing), but because it > exposes and delineates the very actual, sexy, dangerous shifts in > media and culture currently underway. The truth is always stranger > than fiction, and strange is good.> +> -> post: list@rhizome.org> -> questions: info@rhizome.org> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members> +> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php>>

I had just submitted a commentary complaining about the recent lack of member participation, and questioning wether the trend towards blogs was the reason. Then I came across this gem, and felt a bit better.

Jason Van Anden

marc garrett wrote:

> Very enjoyable read - best stuff i've read on here for a long time, > loads to chew on :-)> > thanx> > marc> > > even better than the [ethe]real thing:> > a response to Alex Galloway's "Protocol"> >

True. But still, I think you are right. Most posts aren't discussion pieces, and I can think of a number of discussion pieces that are also - or first & foremost - blog posts.

Tracking decentralized posts outside of rhizome, but within the rhizome community could be facilitated -- just thinking aloud here folks -- by implementing rss feeds. Joining the rhizome community with your blog would then be as easy as posting your rss address to some specialized rhizome page. Or does this already exist?

> Ditto.>> I had just submitted a commentary complaining about the recent lack of > member participation, and questioning wether the trend towards blogs > was the reason. Then I came across this gem, and felt a bit better.>> Jason Van Anden>>> marc garrett wrote:>>> Very enjoyable read - best stuff i've read on here for a long time,>> loads to chew on :-)>>>> thanx>>>> marc>>>>> even better than the [ethe]real thing:>>> a response to Alex Galloway's "Protocol">>>> +> -> post: list@rhizome.org> -> questions: info@rhizome.org> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members> +> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php>